“God is holy. God’s holiness constrains, orders, and conditions God’s love. God’s love infuses, empowers, constrains, and complements God’s holiness.

God would not be as holy as God is without being incomparably loving. God would not be as loving as God is without being incomparably holy.

God’s holiness without God’s love would be unbearable. God’s love without God’s holiness would be unjust.

God’s wisdom found a way to bring them congruently together. It involved a cross.”

(Thomas Oden)

“There are in God two essential attributes.

The first is His love; that love of God demands and insists that God must forgive. The second is His justice; that justice of God demands and insists that man’s sin must be punished.

Here is what in all reverence we may call the dilemma of God. God’s love necessitates the forgiveness of sin; God’s justice necessitates the punishment of sin.

What can God do? The answer is on the Cross, in Jesus Christ, God’s love pays the penalty and bears the punishment which God’s justice demands.

On the Cross, in Jesus Christ, God’s love and God’s justice meet, in the one possible act which could satisfy both that justice and that love.”

(William Barclay)